Thrive 0.4.0b

Modding
1

I have started a topic called “Let’s figure out Thrive 0.4.0 guys”. Its purpose was to test different builds and to find the most overpowered strats, new ways to play and to find holes in the game balance.
And finding loops in balance of the game was really easy.
Right now, Thrive is definitely most fun and most complex when you’re taking your time with the playthrough and auto-evo has time to catch up. This wasy Thrive just feels right, and I really want to play more of it.
But the most efficient strategies involve reductionism - if you choose to not evolve, you can complete the game in around 10 minutes, and this is broken. Also that means that the beginning of the game is really easy, and, by evolving, you make the game harder for yourself. I feel like that is not right.
Another problem is organelle atp cost / organelle efficiency. Most organelles are just not worth it, especially flagellas that cost 7 atp/sec and gives you less than 10% of your current speed and nitrogen fixing plastide(nfp), which is only useful when you are playing really slow.
So, in order to somewhat fix that issues, I proposed some ideas in the topic mentioned before. But ideas worth nothing, so, in order to show what I mean, I’ve decided to make my own mod, which kinda balances things out.
So, let me present to you Thrive 0.4.0b (b stands for “lowskill”).

To play with my mod, download the archive and unpack it.
After that, go to “your Thrive location”/bin/Data and change your Scripts folder with unpacked one.
I only tweaked some numbers.
Patch notes:

Amount of resources needed to dublicate nucleus increased from 2 to 10

That change makes the game much longer for smaller cells, while being relatively miniscule for big ones.

Base movement speed decreased to 1.5
Flagella is twice as strong now

These changes make flagellas much more useful, and, since you want to have flagella now, you have to make up for increased ATP costs. If you choose to ignore flagellas, be prepared to defend from faster predators. Avoiding projectiles will also be harder without flagella.
P.S for some reason, in the editor, it still shows that your initial speed is 2. That is not the case, however.

NFP is twice as efficient now

Just because huge buffs were needed.

5 Likes
2

Leave your comments below and feel free to leave suggestions for further rebalancing of the game.

Btw, I will probably update my mod whenever I feel like it. In that case, patch notes will also be updated

3

I had a go at downloading and playing it but unfortunately it crashed a couple of times for me. I like the initiative though.

I agree the Nitrogen Fixing Plastid is a bit underpowered for how much it costs, I think balancing it is a good goal. I’m not sure about making the nucleus cost a lot to duplicate as I don’t want the game flow to be slow, I almost think it should take pretty much the same time to get to the editor whatever size your cell is, just because it should always feel reasonable.

I’m a bit torn about flagella too, on the one hand they need to be impactful. On the other there isn’t too much room between “this moves so slowly it’s boring” and “this moves so fast it feels game breaking” so I’m not sure how to handle it. Hopefully it will be easier once we have starting as a single hex sorted out as then a cell with a nucleus and 2 cytoplasm can be pretty slow because that isn’t a great design.

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I dont think that my mod makes the game crash more. Actually, it shouldn’t, because I only changed some constants.

Btw, how long do you think one run between evolutions should take (assuming zero deaths). I thought that 2-5 minutes depending on your build is perfect value, that’s why I increased nucleus duplication cost. That way you can’t just rush into cloud and evolve, you also need to survive for a minute afterwards.

Another reason is that by increasing nucleus dupe cost, it reduces the need for decreasing amount of ammonia and phosphates, and that is a good thing, because reducing the amount of phosphates and ammonia will prolong the gameplay for bigger cells much more than for small ones

Move speed of 1.5 doesn’t feel that slow in my opinion, and move speed of 2.5 is not breaking the game as much as it is expected.

1 Like
5

OK yeah I tried it again and it worked great.

For me the move speed of 1.5 is too slow, I know it’s quite a personal thing. I think maybe for that exact build it’s ok as it’s a bit mad to have only 2 cyto and a nucleus but I’d like to have every cell be able to move fast enough to feel ok to play.

In terms of replication time a couple of other factors are how long it takes to get to the multicellular stage, like how many editor sessions do you need. Another one is how long it takes for life to spread through the ocean between the patches. However I don’t think those will be particularly constraining. I think 2-5 minutes is about right, we’ll have to see how it feels when things are more seperated out.